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Published: April 26th 2009
I shuddered as I felt the movement on my skin. Instinctively, my hand reached out to kill the would be invader. But there was none.
It had taken the boat three hours to bring me back to civilisation but it would take my mind much longer to readjust. The swarms of mosquitoes were replaced by waves of motorcycles. Rurre, a town of merely fifteen thousand seemed like a megalopolis compared to Torewa, a community of six families.
A lomito broke my diet of fish, rice and plantains, a cerveza my almost three week abstinence from alcohol and water so thickly laced with soil, you could eat it. It felt good. Scratch that. It felt fucking good. You don't know what you've got till it's gone. How true.
The first night I tried to sleep in my hammock. The Brazilian way. What a mistake-a to make-a. As the black flies retreated and night closed in, armies of mosquitoes invaded . The chickens were safe in their coups from the brain eating birds but the moths who laid eggs in wet clothes that would later hatch and crawl into your skin were on the prowl. Sixty eight countries behind me
and none the wiser, I witnessed as they found a way through my mosquiteiro and attacked me. My tent offered little refuge.
Sure, the first night was bliss but after that the tiniest of mosquitoes found their way through the net lining. I was under siege. Twenty four hours a day. Seeking some sort of refuge, I remained in my tent for over half of that time. It did little to restrain my adversaries. The humming birds that buzzed around me as I traversed stream after stream in my long boots searching for crocodiles. The sight of a pirarucu jumping clear out of the water and across a log as I glided past in a canoe. A flock of blue and yellow macaws squawking along as they crossed overhead. It would be paradise...if only they got rid of the bugs.
Bees and wasps, they were easy to deal with. The yellow-tip tarantula that lived in the palm throng roof-top above my tent kept the other spiders at bay. Aurelio with his Machete took care of the snakes. But what can you do against pin-sized nasties? Kill one and you have three hundred others to deal with. It was
Moth or Butterfly?
Who cares. It's still beautifula never ending battle. A struggle merely to exist. You wish to join Cesar as he goes fishing for a giant pintau but you can't. You'd like to go with Emilio into the jungle to bring down a chancho de la selva (wild boar) but the conditions are too taxing. Few manage. Emilio and his wife are the only members of the community that have been there for more than two years. New members come but leave, unable to cope with the harsh environment.
I help as much as I can. I labour in the mid-day sun when the bugs are least active. Four days later, I teach the kids the fundamentals of basketball and we play our first game of jungle basketball. Another idea and another three days of hard labour later the wobbly log bridge leading to Torewa receives a welcome addition: a rope to help people pass.
What is contraception? I get asked by the adults as I try to teach them about life outside the community.
Aids? Never heard of it. Good for you. I teach the kids how to fight and to pick-up girls. If it wasn't me, somebody else would.
Torewa
wasn't quite what I had expected it to be but nothing in life usually is. Four hundred and twenty eight hours after my arrival I finally relent and give in. The bugs had gotten the better of me. I return to Rurre only to discover that they also hadn't heard of aids. But...they have Skittles! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skittles_(confectionery))
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